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The NZ-born supernova hits Melbourne before her U.S. tour

How long did Vows take to make?Well, I moved to Melbourne when I was 17, and I’m 21 now. Obviously not every day was spent in the studio, but there was a lot of working on the songs, going to America to work with producers – these things do take a while, and because I was allowed the freedom to explore, I did take the time to do it. I wasn’t under any deadlines.

Still, four years…Yeah, there were times it was very frustrating, but looking back I’m glad I spent that time. You only get one shot at the first album.

Were the songs drawn from that entire period?[Single] ‘Settle Down’ was written in New Zealand when I was 16, but the rest of the are pretty fresh. It was a bit of a joke song, actually, that no-one had even heard, and I played it to my producer like [puts on dismissive voice] “oh, this is just this silly little thing that I did’, and he was like “nope, we’re going to work on this”. So that was a real fluke.

Shooting the video for ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ [her duet with Goyte] must have been an ordeal…Oh, it really was. It started at about four or five on a Tuesday afternoon, and I was still there at 7.30am the next day, still standing there, still being painted. It was that intense. There was a point where I almost started to fall over. But it looked great!